


Dance With Me

by lady_needless_litany



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Dancing, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 12:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13341576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_needless_litany/pseuds/lady_needless_litany
Summary: TheDiscoveryis chaotic, frenetic. Stamets and Culber take a rare moment of quiet to talk, and Hugh learns something new about his partner.





	Dance With Me

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in my WIP folder since episode 7, but I dug it out and finished it (quite quickly, so sorry for any errors) to cope with the emotional tornado that was "Despite Yourself"...you can find me on Tumblr as lady-needless-litany.
> 
> Set between S01E07 "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" and S01E08 "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum".

It’s been a quiet day, which is a novelty on the U.S.S _Discovery_. There have been no jumps, no Klingon attacks, and Lorca has stayed away from him, undoubtedly pushing the bridge crew through another round of simulations. That, as far as Paul is concerned, is not his problem. So, all in all, he can’t claim to be unhappy.

And so, he’d dismissed the rest of the Engineering crew an hour before the end of their shift. They’d left with somewhat bemused expressions. To tell the truth, Paul isn’t quite sure why he did it either. Usually, he overworked people, often not realising that others couldn’t work effectively for twenty straight hours without rest. Today, though… he thinks that, perhaps, he needed the quiet. One of Starfleet’s endless manuals probably contains some regulation that prohibits it, but currently he doesn’t care, and he’s too damn valuable for anyone else to protest.

The room’s a little cold, now that it’s empty, and lit mainly by the glow of the spore drive chamber and the screens in front of him, tinged red by the light filtering through the adjacent window. He finds the steady thrum of the ship comforting in its familiarity. He delves into the ship’s most recent feedback, tapping away at his screen, as he enjoys his first opportunity in weeks to work uninterrupted.

There’s a soft _ping_ from the console, distracting him. A notification appears and he presses it unwillingly, already feeling the stirrings of annoyance. He’s halfway through forming complain before he sees who it’s from. His negativity rapidly dissolves. He scans the message quickly:

_CMO’s let me off early._

It’s short and to the point, which Paul appreciates. He’s also mildly amused by the situation — a shift finishing early is a once in a blue moon occurrence, but it’s coincided quite neatly today. 

He types out a quick reply, then turns back to his work.

_Everyone’s gone already, so you can visit me, if you want._

He can practically sense the confusion from the other side of the ship; the image brings a faint smile to his face. He returns to his work.

A few minutes later, the doors slide open. The sound conspicuous in the quiet.

“Where’s everyone else?” Hugh asks, his voice rising in a way that betrays his underlying concern. Usually, Paul would tease him, but he decides to spare him in light of recent events. He’s got a right to be worried.

“Oh,” he says, glancing up only briefly. “I told them to leave early.”

“All of them? Isn’t that against regulation?” he ask, incredulous.

“Probably, but it’s not like we’re going anywhere. Besides, the next shift’s on in-” he consults the clock on his computer. “Forty minutes.”

“Why, though? It’s not you.”

“Why did the CMO let you go early?”

“Quiet day. I believe his exact words were: ‘I can’t have all of you standing around doing nothing, you’re taking up too much space.’”

“Well, same here.”

“I take it you have to stay until the official end of the shift?”

“Technically, but hopefully the next bunch are early.” Paul says. He’s not optimistic. He can’t blame them for wanting as many minutes of sleep as possible, though.

“Is it OK if I wait here until then?” 

Paul has to fight not to roll his eyes — as if he’s going to send Hugh away when they already have so little time together.

“Sure. Just don’t break anything.”

“You make it sound like I’m a toddler.”

“Are you not?”

Hugh snorts in a most undignified fashion and wanders over to the spore drive chamber, laying a hand on the cool glass - but, _stars_ , that answer takes Hugh back to the days before the Battle of the Binary Stars, when they were just kids who wanted to explore the universe, when they spoke freely and laughed often. He misses those days. It was such as short time ago — a year, more or less — but they seem to have aged immeasurably. Nothing's changed, really — they’ve still got stars in their eyes and they still love each other without reservation. But the war happened, and that’s all had to take a back seat to Lorca’s regime and the Klingon threat.

As if sensing the melancholic turn Hugh’s thoughts have taken, Paul follows up his retort with something a little less snarky.

“Dance with me.” Hugh pivots towards him, blinking in surprise. The statement — and it was a statement, not a question — is unexpected. It’s sincere, but it’s playful too. And generally far too whimsical for Stamets’ character, though the spore drive has somewhat loosened his inhibitions lately. Or not. It depends on the day.

“I can't dance.”

Stamets steps out from behind his station, coming to stand before Hugh. He offers a hand.

“I’ll lead.”

Hugh accepts, and Stamets pulls him to the centre of the room.

In fact, he can't quite explain what compelled him to ask, except that his brief spin with Burnham had reignited a neglected pleasure. She didn't remember, of course, that they’d stood in a corridor, moments from explosion, and talked and _danced_. But he remembers. It’s etched into his memory.

These days, he spends a lot of time confused, lost — but in a way that's a blessing, obscuring the pain and suffering that he’s witnessed in amongst a thousand other, more mundane moments. Of the tens of times that Stamets had been forced to relive the loop, over and over and over again, he’s glad that it's not the deaths that have stuck in his memory. He could never forget the way that he’d felt (especially the horror and helplessness of being unable to save Hugh, especially the first time, when he'd thought that _this is the end_ ), but the specific memories thankfully evade him. No, the ones that linger are finally facing Mudd, feeling invincible. They’re Tyler and Burnham’s first kiss. They’re dancing with someone, promising that next time they’ll do better, knowing you have only seconds to live.  
But the day-to-day struggles are only multiplying. The way that his knowledge just changes. Usually, it passes quickly, before anyone else can notice. Except that once he forgot who his partner was, for a split second. He can't forgive himself for that.

That all dissolves now. Hugh’s arms are solid and comforting, feelings that Paul has been sorely lacking in recent weeks. For once, he feels grounded. He knows that this is here and now, and time and space and war and meddling Starfleet captains can leave him alone for a while. It's a relief to hear nothing more that the ship’s reassuring hum, to know nothing more than this very moment.

Hugh interrupts his train of thought.

“You? A dancer.”

“Ballroom. It was high school. My parents sent me to classes.” Stamets frowned lightly. “I believe they were attempting to make me more sociable.”

Hugh snorted.

“And to try to get me interested in something other than science, mathematics, or computing.”

“Now, that I cannot imagine. You being interested in something other than your mushrooms.” His tone was playful.

“Hey!” he injected with mock offence. Hugh, ever attentive, responds to the slight pressure that Stamets exerts on his shoulder, so they begin to drift in a vague circle. 

They take a few more steps before he spoke again. “It may surprise you, but it was actually kind of successful.”

“Really?”

“Did it make me any more sociable?” Stamets shrugged. “Absolutely not...my instructor always had to make some other student pair with me. But I loved the dancing. I was surprisingly good at it.”

“And here I was, thinking that you had zero coordination. So, what dances do you know?”

“The standard. Waltz. Viennese waltz. Polka. Quickstep. Foxtrot. Merengue. I could never jive. Too bouncy. Tango was my favourite.”

“How did I never know this?” he exclaimed.

“Shocking, I know.” The was no desert drier than his voice.

Hugh is looking over Paul’s shoulder, into the glow of the spore drive, and he can sense the tumultuous nature of his reflection. He reminds himself that he is not the only one beset by tension recently. His partner has taken to bearing the look of an anxious mother hen whenever they’re together. When it comes to work, he knows that Hugh has gone into overdrive under the pressure of active conflict; he knows, from personal experience, that the easiest way to deal with that kind of duress is to shove everything nonessential out of your mind. And he knows that it cannot continue indefinitely. Perhaps, in this small moment of tranquility, Hugh can find his release.

Indeed, it’s not long before Hugh vocalises the conflict.

“Where would we be if not for the spore drive?” he murmurs softly. It feels like the statement should be bitter; instead, it’s just resigned. Hugh Culber is too optimistic a man to dwell for too long on resentment.

“Losing the war.” Paul’s answer is pragmatic, without exaggeration or arrogance. He’s a dreamer with an aversion to fantasy; that paradox was one of the things that had drawn Hugh to him in the first place.

“Hm. But what if we’d never ended up on the _Discovery_ at all?”

“It’s not worth speculating about impossibilities.”

“Says the man who invented something that defies everything we know about space travel.”

“No, no. That was never _impossible_ , just undiscovered.”

“Still, I’d like to think that…” he sighs. Words cannot convey the maelstrom that his heart contains - the myriad of feeling that he can’t even begin to process logically. 

“You’re right. It’s not worth speculating about possibilities.” 

Silence resumes. It’s comfortable - they’ve never been the kind of people that are afraid of being able to hear their own thoughts.

“You know, Doctor, there’s one huge advantage to the spore drive.”

“Oh, really?” he says, with a half-hearted attempt at scepticism.

“Well, now that I’ve seen most of the known universe, I can honestly and non-hyperbolically state that you are my favourite thing in the universe.”

“Even more than your mushrooms?” Hugh tries to his tone light, trying to suppress the emotions he feels welling within him, but his voice begins to crack with emotion. He glances down, towards his feet. He can feel Paul’s gentle gaze resting on his forehead.

“Even more than my mushrooms. And I almost _died_ for my mushrooms.”

Well, not quite the mushrooms themselves. But definitely for the spore drive, which counts.

When Hugh doesn’t reply, Paul worries that his last remark had been too flippant, that it had only reinforced his partner’s concerns.

“I mean...the mycelial network? It’s intoxicating in the weirdest way. Every time we jump, it’s like a huge hit of drugs-” _I should not have said that_ , he berates himself. “But more than that...it’s like someone’s taught me to fly. For a few seconds, I can see all of time and space and it’s _amazing_. It’s...indescribably beautiful.”

He pauses for breath, his eyes darting around the room in an attempt to describe it.

“It’s incandescent. Unimaginably, inconceivably so.”

He picks his next words carefully. Finally saying it is difficult, and it feels rushed, but the relief that it brings is blissful. The words have been bottled up inside him for weeks, and Hugh deserves to hear them.

“But if I didn’t have something to ground me, I’m not sure I’d ever come back. It would be so easy to lose myself...but I don’t, and I _never_ will. Because I have you to come back to.”

When Hugh finally raises his head, Stamets can see that his eyes are red-rimmed and watering.

“Y’know, for someone who once claimed to be emotionless,” he inhales deeply, trying to prevent the tears falling. “You can be a complete sap sometimes.”

“It’s one of the reasons you love me.”

Hugh smiled at him weakly. “Yeah, it is.”


End file.
